9 Mistakes to Avoid to Get More Reviews
The Art of Getting More Customer Reviews
An important part of managing a modern business is maintaining a credible online presence. Failing to manage your business’s online reputation and reviews can make it difficult to attract customers and generate sales.
Reviews directly impact the purchase decisions of your potential customers. Strong reviews have the power to influence customers to purchase products or services at your business. They can drive incremental revenue.
Clearly, reviews are important. Yet, many businesses make some avoidable mistakes while trying to generate reviews.
The Importance of Customer Reviews
Revenue. Profits. Customers. These are just some of the reasons why reviews are important.
Besides the credibility and social proof that customer reviews bring your business, they also offer an insight into your customer’s mindset. You get an honest opinion on what your customer’s liked and what they thought could be improved.
Customer reviews allow customers to voice their opinion about your business and this creates customer loyalty. It helps customers feel involved with shaping your business and it helps them understand that your business goes beyond trying to make more profit at every opportunity. Customer reviews let customers know that you care about them and are willing to go the extra mile to fulfil their needs.
While most businesses understand the importance of reviews, many of them continue to make some easily avoidable mistakes. Here are a few mistakes to avoid when asking customers for reviews:
Most Common Mistakes to Avoid
While most people understand and appreciate the importance of reviews, many people make some fairly common mistakes that are easy to avoid. Here are some of the most common mistakes and the best way to avoid them.
1. Not asking for reviews
Many businesses try to avoid getting reviewed because they are scared of receiving negative reviews. However, research shows that over 97% of all e-commerce customers prefer consulting reviews before buying a product.
This proves that customers need to be constantly prompted and, in some cases, even incentivized to get them to review your business. A lack of relevant reviews on your page can deter other customers from shopping with you.
Just do it. If you’re confident in the product or service you provide, you should start asking customers for reviews. Most customers that are content are happy to provide reviews.
Setting up prompts, CTAs, etc., on your page can help you persuade consumers to leave reviews. You can even offer special discounts or other rewards for all registered users that leave reviews.
2. Not asking for reviews soon enough
This is another common mistake that many businesses make. You didn’t send the request soon enough, and when you finally sent the request or invite for a review, you received no response. It is essential to ask a customer for reviews within a few days of the product being delivered to them.
Submit a review request as soon as possible, once the sale is complete. You can set up email/notification triggers that prompt your system to request a review once the product is delivered.
3. Not responding
If you aren’t monitoring your reviews regularly, you won’t be able to respond and engage with the customers. This is a lost opportunity to establish trust with your business. It is important to be prompt and responsive to all reviews in order to create a healthy business-to-customer dynamic.
This is particularly relevant for negative reviews. Negative reviews give you an opportunity to understand more about your customers and apologize if your service could have been better. Here are a few negative review response examples if you are struggling to come up with a response.
Keep an eye on what’s being said about your company. Respond to the negative reviews with patience and rationality and work towards solving the problem as soon as possible. Be sure to report negative reviews that appear to be spam/misleading.
4. Not monitoring the average review score
Most small businesses only notice less than average review scores once their lead generation starts lagging because of dormant ads.
We recommend keeping a keen eye on the reviews you get and updating your products/services accordingly. Reviews can be a phenomenal way to understand what your product is lacking and how to improve it.
5. Not offering to resolve conflicts
When there’s an issue or concern that is voiced through an online review, it is an opportunity to try to help that customer. Not responding to an issue or being rude and stubborn in response to negative reviews not only affects your relationship with those customers but also discourages new ones from shopping with you.
Monitor, respond, and resolve where required. Own up to the genuine mistakes on your part and offer to help the customers get reimbursed through store credit or product replacement.
6. Not moving the conversation offline when appropriate
In cases where you believe there’s going to be some back and forth conversation, it’s best to move the conversation offline. Once it’s resolved, you can re-engage the customer online via review channels. But we don’t recommend keeping the entire conversation and communication online since it is hard to judge the customer’s point of view.
When resolving conflicts or having long conversations move the conversation offline as soon as possible.
7. Not promoting great reviews on social media
Yet wondering how to get reviews for your business? To get more reviews, you naturally need more customers. But this is a virtuous cycle because more customers lead to more reviews, which in turn lead to more customers. Most businesses are not able to break out of this confusing cycle and are left scrambling to generate reviews.
Make the most out of your existing reviews. Advertise the good ones on social media platforms and couple them with engaging CTAs to help your business gain traction. Maybe even add in a picture or two. Here's a handy tool to make before and after photos of your work.
8. Not creating and claiming review profiles
If you haven’t created or claimed your review profiles like Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp, you are leaving money on the table because you won’t be able to respond to and engage with customers.
Creating centralized review profiles can help you get, view, and manage reviews much better.
9. Not managing review profiles
It’s not enough to just create review profiles; you need to regularly manage them as well. This entails keeping details up to date, including helpful pictures, and taking the time to monitor and respond to reviews, both positive and negative.
If you don't manage them, you might not even realize that your Google reviews are not showing up.
Businesses that manage their profiles, reputation, and reviews are proven to sell more. So what are you waiting for? Use NiceJob’s Review Management Software today.
Online Reviews Can Boost Your Business
Online customer reviews are here to stay and can be the best way to boost your business. In the face of increasing competition, they are a wonderful way to help your business stand out.
A large part of online reputation management is about being honest, open, and helpful to your customers. Reviews are the foundation of a strong customer-brand relationship. Getting enough reviews, both good and bad puts your business across as a reputable venture that believes in serving its patrons to the best of its abilities.
